Principles of western civilisation

x THE MODERN WORLD-CONFLICT 365

apostolic'—‘“‘the two men who had only become orators because they had something to say . . . the two plain men leaving their homes and their business, and going over the length and breadth of the land to convert the nation,’? as to a new religion.

The general observer sees the forward movement in politics carrying along with it a thousand interests and a multitude of sub-movements, the selfish objects of which its direction for the time being happens to favour. But it must never be forgotten that not in the superficial conclusions often drawn from these appearances have we the meaning of Western Liberalism. Deep below the surface of such phenomena, the cause which is carrying development forward has been the expression of a force unparalleled in history ; a force which has always represented, in the last resort, a sense of responsibility in men’s minds outweighing the claims of all political interests, and a quality of conviction transcending the content of every political creed.

We are apt, in short, to regard the existence and results of modern Liberalism as something inherent in the political organism as such.? But we forget, as a writer already quoted reminds us of England, “the tremendous struggles that were needed before

1 Life of Richard Cobden, vol. i. ix. 2 Tbid,

® The only really scientific and absolutely destructive criticism of the Marxian conception of modern society is that which, going far beyond any examination of the economic theories associated with the name of Marx, brings home to the mind a vivid realisation of the fixed impossibility of getting a scientific conception of society out of any theory of interests in the State bounded by the limits of political consciousness. All such conceptions have been reduced to meaninglessness in the presence of the vaster import of the evolutionary process as we are coming now to understand it,—namely, as a process slowly accomplishing the subordination of the present to the future.

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